Word: customs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Male Swarming. Most mosquitoes are less direct. Their mating habits center around a curious custom that scientists call "swarming." Hundreds of males gather 'in a dim-lit space, whirling around & around one another, emitting a low hum. This, according to one theory, excites and attracts the females. Certainly any female that comes near the swarming males is never the same again. Some observers claim to have seen the same female join the same swarm repeatedly...
...found that it had been entered by thieves during the night and the small safe in which the petty, cash was kept had been blown open. Owing to the fact that practically all of the money taken in during the day in tuition fees was, according to the custom, deposited in the bank before night, the thieves got only $378.67 in cash, plus $300 worth of Liberty Bonds...
Local savants are indulging in their annual June custom of trying to pick the man who will cop Honorary Degrees in the Commencement stakes...
...family's 85-year-old store is both an art shrine where collectors and plain shoppers may browse in peace, and a smart shop where a bride may order everything from her china, glassware and sterling to her custom-tailored furniture and kimonos. Gump's will give shelf room to a $12.50 piece of California pottery-if it is esthetically good-alongside a $1,800 piece of Ming Dynasty porcelain, and encourages its customers to do the same...
...Shanghai's tumbrils rumble past. On a typical day, in the yellow brick courtyard of the police station, swift sentence of death by shooting was meted out to three prisoners for plotting to overthrow the government. One was Wu Shih-wen, 36, from far-off Manchuria. According to custom, Wu knelt to write his last words. He admonished his wife: "Please marry again. Do not remember me any more." He instructed his nephew: "Be filial to your grandmother so as to redeem my crimes...